Education is a factor of significant
importance in economic development. In less developed countries including our,
the expenditure on education is quite small as compared to the other sector of
economy. In the present educational scenario the Muslims are far behind in
knowledge compared to Christians. A recent report says that less than 3%
students in the age group of 17-24 years are enrolled in a college or a
university in our country.

This figure is more or less true for 57
Muslim countries where negligence in learning, science and technology have led
to a collective political turmoil, inefficiency in planning, utilization of
resources, lack of coordination and economic decline. The Muslim's world
contribution in the research and development (R&D) is very poor. Only 2% of the
technicians are involved in research activities in Muslim world.

There are 500 universities in these 57
Muslim countries; that is one university for every 3 million people. The present
population of the Muslim world is nearly 1.5 billion. In 2004, Shanghai's Jiao
Tong University published record-Academic ranking of world's universities, and
not a single university from Muslim countries was in the top 500. The ranking
shows that Harvard University in USA leads the ranking of these 500
universities. Others in that orders are seventeen from the USA & three from
other countries and these are: Harvard, Stanford (USA), Cambridge (UK),
Berkeley, MIT, GIT & Princeton (USA), Oxford (UK),Columbia, Chicago, Yale,
Cornell & San Diego (USA), Tokyo (Japan), Pennsylvania, Los Angles, San
Francisco, Wisconsin, Michigan and Washington (Seattle, USA).

This ranking was based on several
measures of research performance, academic quality including academic citations,
research papers published in quality Journals as assessed by the Shanghai Jiao
Tong University. Industrialized nations spend 2.3% of GDP on R&D, whereas 57
Muslim countries spend only 0.2%. United States alone spend 2% on R&D. The total
GDP of Spain is more than all the Arab oil producing countries which are 12 in
numbers. Hardly 16% of the Muslim population is involved in industrial
production as compared to 60% of the western population.

One cannot ignore the services of
Western world in the improvement of the quality of human life irrespective of
religions. West serves the humanity by its great contribution in the education
and health services. The journey of knowledge-based economies started during the
seventeenth century-known as age of industrial revolution and mass production in
the West.

ComsTech reports that scientific
research in Muslim countries is so poor that only 2,500 articles out of the
total 2,60,000 articles are published every year there. It means only 1% is
contributed by Muslim world. In science from 500 universities in Muslim
countries, P.hDs holders are less than 500, while 3,000 alone are from UK. Today
Arab World consists of 23 countries with population of about 400 million. None
has a noble prize winner in the field of Science. The combined annual GDP of
Muslim countries is under $2 trillion less than that of Germany $ 2.4 trillion.

It must be noted that these valuable
inventions and discoveries are used for human benefits in all the countries of
the world and the people are getting benefits by their uses.

Western scientists have swept the Noble
Prize Awards which was established in 1901 in the memory of Alfred Noble of
Sweden who invented Dynamite. The noble prize includes $1.4 million cash, a gold
medal and a diploma and is held on 9th December every year.

Linus Pauling was the youngest person
(25yrs) and Raymond Davis Jr. the oldest person awarded noble prize in physics
in 2002 at the age of 88 years. Women have bagged 12 prizes in different fields.

From the above discussion, it is clear
that in spite of great natural resources and wealth, the Muslims all over the
world are severely lacking in education, research work etc. It is because
Muslims have forgotten the teachings of the Holy Quran and the Prophet (PBUH).
Instead we are taking Riba (interest), telling lie, not paying Zakat properly,
not even reciting the Holy Quran in true sense and not offering five times
prayers, and openly doing bad deeds and not helping the poor etc.

Education in Pakistan: Education plays
the role of leadership in the country. The function of the educational
institution is to develop the people physical, mentally, psychologically,
socially, and spiritually. But unfortunately, the expenditure on the expansion
of education is quite small as compared to the other sectors of the economy.
Pakistan's literacy rate is also very low as compared to even SAARC countries.
If we take some middle income countries, their literacy rates will be relatively
high and so will be per capita income, e.g. Malaysia and Brazil have literacy
rates of over 78% and 81% with per capita income of over US$ 3000. The high
income countries have literacy rates above 95% with per capita income of 25,510
dollars on an average. Thus a high literacy rate leads to a high per capita
income and the role of education in economic development becomes very
significant.

The most concerning thing for Pakistan
is that it has been placed at 135th in terms of public investment in education
out of 200 countries. On the index of availability of scientist and engineers,
Pakistan ranks 61 out of 93 countries. Pakistan stands 31 out of 35 Muslim
countries in literacy rate. The above data obviously show the very low literacy
rate even if we compare Pakistan with Muslim countries. Literacy rate is claimed
to over 45% in Pakistan. But real literacy rate in the country may be around
10%. The word literacy is defined as an ability of a "person" who can read a
newspaper and write a simple letter in vernacular language. The global
definition of literacy should be ability to read a newspaper and write a simple
letter in English understand and speak English. Pakistan education system is
mainly divided into five levels: Primary (from grade one through five); Middle
(from grade six to eight); High (from grade nine through ten); intermediate
(grade eleven & twelve); and university programs leading to graduate and
advanced degrees.